Toby Harnden: Will the Deep South be Newt Gingrich's last stand or his salvation tonight?

Newt Gingrich needs at least one victory in Dixie, where opinion polls indicate a close three-way split in the vote in today's primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, if his White House hopes are to remain alive.

In the closing days, he's thrown everything into the two states, which he hopes to add to South Carolina and Georgia, his only other wins so far.

'If he wins Alabama and Mississippi today it is a new dynamic in this election,' said state senator Jabo Waggoner, introducing him at an event at a country club in Birmingham, Alabama today.

'He has spent all week in Alabama and Mississippi. He came Monday to Alabama, he was here Wednesday, he was here Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I've been from Huntsville all the way to Gulf Shores, to Robertsdale, big towns, little towns and introduced him.'

The latest polls show Gingrich, frontrunner Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum locked together. If Romney wins both states, he will have defied expectations, silenced those who said a Mormon could never win in the South.

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If Santorum wins both, there will be enormous pressure on Gingrich to step aside so there can be a one-on-one battle between a conservative Republican and Romney. Two wins for Gingrich would damage Santorum and ensure a three-way battle for at least weeks to come.

Speaking at an Alabama forum last night that Romney decided not to attend, Gingrich, a native of neighbouring Georgia, mocked the frontrunner's new fondness for grits, saying: 'I kind of feel relatively at home here. In fact, this morning when I had grits, I thought it was a very normal thing to do.'

Campaign trail: The tour bus of the former House Speaker waits for his return outside a campaign event today

That was a reference to Romney's joke in Pascagoula, Mississippi at the weekend when he said: 'I’m learning to say ‘y’all’ and I like grits. Strange things are happening to me.'

Earlier on Friday, Romney had declared a new love of catfish. 'I had catfish for the second time,' he told a small crowd sheltering from torrential rain outside a diner in Mobile, Alabama. 'It was delicious, just like the first time.'

In South Carolina back in January, Romney had told a crowd at a barbecue joint that he was not 'a catfish man, or not a fish man so much'.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who was born and raised in Michigan, has faced some derision for his new habit of dropping his g's, as Southerners tend to do. 'That’s a fine Alabama good mornin'' he said in Mobile.

He quipped that he'd been getting hugs from the Southern girls…from 12, to well, a lot more than 12" and that with everyone crammed under the eaves of the restaurant as the rain poured down 'we are all nice together, all nice and wet, you know, like a can of sardines'.

Competition: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, left, speaks to supporters during a campaign stop at Kirkwood, Missouri, and Rick Santorum addresses the Alabama Republicans forum in Birmingham, Alabama, right

Romney even made a self-deprecating reference to his much-lampooned 2007 joke about being a hunter of 'small varmints, if you will'.

He described a local supporter as 'terrific hunter' and added: 'I’m looking forward to going out and hunting with you sometime. And you can actually show me which end of the rifle to point.'

While many Alabamians said they could forgive Romney's jokey, awkward style on the stump because he was at least trying, some Gingrich supporters said it showed he was out of touch.

'This election is too serious for that kind of remark to be made by anybody,' said Nina Kingery, 72, a real estate agent from Birmingham. 'We've had stupid presidents but we've never had a president who hated America, like Obama.

'We don't need another milquetoast RINO - Republican In Name Only. And that's what Romney is. If Newt wins Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas everybody will be encouraged to jump on the bandwagon.

'He needs some kind of show in the South so the elite media won't say that he's the loser. Who knows what's going to happen at the convention.'

Her friend Betty Stockham, 83, said Romney was 'a north-easterner and that's his mode of thinking' but the country needed someone who embraced Southern values. 'We are the bedrock of our nation. We have God-fearing, biblically-based, eternal values. They should be looking to us for leadership.'

Scenarios for a Gingrich win, however, increasingly depend on Romney not being able to secure the nomination by netting 1,144 delegates before the convention, which would then be contested. A senior Alabama Republican and Gingrich backer said that he would be talking to the Santorum campaign to urge a deal over transferring delegates.

Even to get to that situation, however, he said that it was 'essential' that Gingrich win both Alabama and Mississippi tonight.